Adam Bede eBook

But at present one might fancy the house in the early
stage of a chancery suit, and that the fruit from
that grand double row of walnut-trees on the right
hand of the enclosure would fall and rot among the
grass, if it were not that we heard the booming bark
of dogs echoing from great buildings at the back.
And now the half-weaned calves that have been sheltering
themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the left-hand
wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible
bark, doubtless supposing that it has reference to
buckets of milk.

Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see
by whom; for imagination is a licensed trespasser:
it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and
peep in at windows with impunity. Put your face
to one of the glass panes in the right-hand window:
what do you see? A large open fireplace, with
rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor; at the
far end, fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle
of the floor, some empty corn-bags. That is the
furniture of the dining-room. And what through
the left-hand window? Several clothes-horses,
a pillion, a spinning-wheel, and an old box wide open
and stuffed full of coloured rags. At the edge
of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which,
so far as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong
resemblance to the finest Greek sculpture, and especially
in the total loss of its nose. Near it there
is a little chair, and the butt end of a boy’s
leather long-lashed whip.

The history of the house is plain now. It was
once the residence of a country squire, whose family,
probably dwindling down to mere spinsterhood, got
merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne.
It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm.
Like the life in some coast town that was once a watering-place,
and is now a port, where the genteel streets are silent
and grass-grown, and the docks and warehouses busy
and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed its
focus, and no longer radiates from the parlour, but
from the kitchen and the farmyard.

Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest
time of the year, just before hay-harvest; and it
is the drowsiest time of the day too, for it is close
upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by
Mrs. Poyser’s handsome eight-day clock.
But there is always a stronger sense of life when
the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring
down his beams, and making sparkles among the wet straw,
and lighting up every patch of vivid green moss on
the red tiles of the cow-shed, and turning even the
muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the
drain into a mirror for the yellow-billed ducks, who
are seizing the opportunity of getting a drink with
as much body in it as possible. There is quite
a concert of noises; the great bull-dog, chained against
the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by
the unwary approach of a cock too near the mouth of
his kennel, and sends forth a thundering bark, which